First of all I need to thank Phoebe Morgan at HarperCollins for sending me the ARC. You know me - if I see a book floating around then I want a copy!
Themes: Family, abuse
‘Girl A,’ she said. ‘The girl who escaped. If anyone was going to make it, it was going to be you.’
Lex Gracie doesn’t want to think about her family. She doesn’t want to think about growing up in her parents’ House of Horrors. And she doesn’t want to think about her identity as Girl A: the girl who escaped. When her mother dies in prison and leaves Lex and her siblings the family home, she can’t run from her past any longer. Together with her sister, Evie, Lex intends to turn the House of Horrors into a force for good. But first she must come to terms with her six siblings – and with the childhood they shared.
Okay so I gathered from online what the book was about before I started to read it and then coincidentally I watched a documentary about those 13 or so kids from California whose parents chained them up in their bedrooms. From reading Girl A, I realised that it was a pretty similar story but this was based on when the kids have escaped and are all grown up. Our protagonist is Lex and she's as complicated as you would expect someone to be if they had been abused but Lex is the girl that escapes and ultimately rescues her brothers and sisters.
Lex's mother has died in prison and she is left in charge of the house—yes the house that they were chained up in. I literally said aloud, “Girl burn it down!” But Lex is clearly better than me because she wants to utilise the house for good and she hunts down her siblings to get them to agree. So we get to meet the surviving children and everyone is challenged in their own ways. I loved the flash backs where we can see how the parents start to change. Honestly I just wanted to shake the mother as she seemed less crazy than the dad but she clearly isn't able to save herself let alone all the kids she chose to have.
It is dark and chilling but also very sad. What makes it so disturbing is that this happens in real life and I can't even begin to understand how any parent can treat their children like that. I was rooting for all the kids even though some didn't seem very likeable but considering what they went through it's understandable. I definitely have respect for Lex because she's the one who actually tried to escape the House of Horrors and didn't turn her back on her siblings to save herself.
Well done to HarperCollins on the publicity for this book as they defo built up the hype and I think it was justified. An amazing debut.
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5/5
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